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"I liken them a bit to a drunk burglar. They're kickin' in the front door, knocking over the vase, while they're walking out with your television set," Comey said Sunday on CBS' 60 Minutes. "They're just prolific. Their strategy seems to be: `We'll just be everywhere all the time. And there's no way they can stop us."'

Comey's remarks on the news magazine comes two weeks after a Senate Armed Services Committee report concluded that China's military broke into Pentagon contractors' computer networks at least 50 times—hacks that threaten "to erode US military technical superiority."

And in May, the government announced the indictment of five Chinese military personnel accused of hacking into major US corporations and stealing trade secrets. While Attorney General Eric Holder promised to bring the five to the US for trial, the defendants "are believed to be living freely" in China. The targeted companies, ranging from Alcoa to Westinghouse, were allegedly attacked between 2006 to 2014, and China got away with trade secrets connected to everything from nuclear to renewable energy, according to the indictment.

All the while, the Chinese government has accused the US government of hacking into China's businesses.

Comey, when asked Sunday by newsman Scott Pelley about how many cyberattacks the US has succumbed to, said, "It would be too many to count. I mean, I think of it as kind of an evil layer cake. At the top you have nation state actors, who are trying to break into our systems. Terrorists, organized cyber syndicates, very sophisticated, harvesting people's personal computers, down to hacktivists, down to criminals and pedophiles."

And when it comes to "what countries are attacking the United States," Comey added:

Well, I don't want to give you a complete list. But I can tell you the top of the list is the Chinese. As we have demonstrated with the charges we brought earlier this year against five members of the People's Liberation Army, they are extremely aggressive and widespread in their efforts to break into American systems to steal information that would benefit their industry.

Moments later, he said, "I mean, there are two kinds of big companies in the United States. There are those who've been hacked by the Chinese and those who don't know they've been hacked by the Chinese."

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David Kravets
The senior editor for Ars Technica. Founder of TYDN fake news site. Technologist. Political scientist. Humorist. Dad of two boys. Been doing journalism for so long I remember manual typewriters with real paper. Emaildavid.kravets@arstechnica.com//Twitter@dmkravets